Peirce, on the other hand, presented his side in a lawsuit in Chancery against Sherley and the other New Plymouth adventurers. It is unfortunate that the answers to the charges do not survive. Peirce claimed an investment of £300 in the colony, reporting that when the adventurers, “being moved by the distressed condition of the Planters ... in that place foreign to them and a vast desert,” wished to furnish relief, they couldn’t raise the money. At the request of Sherley, Peirce then tried to sustain the plantation by putting up funds to outfit the ill-starred _Paragon_. This vessel, hired from Peirce by the adventurers, sailed twice in the fall and winter of 1622–23 with freight and passengers, chiefly women and children. When wintry seas forced her to turn back the second time, Peirce said that, although the adventurers had promised that he should not suffer any losses from the voyage, contrary to such agreement, he bore the entire loss. After Peirce was unable to refit his ship at Portsmouth quickly enough to suit the adventurers, the latter sent a writ from Admiralty to arrest him for £600. Under his brother Richard’s bond, the merchant returned to London, where the adventurers “made a great clamour against ... [him] for some supposed unjust dealing....” They attempted to buy out his indenture, ultimately succeeding in obtaining from Peirce’s brother a £500 bond to deliver it. This compelled Peirce to sign it over to Sherley; besides he lost the chance to recoup his loss by another voyage. In spite of a complex series of legal maneuvers (Bradford wrote that Peirce “sued them in most of the chief courts in England ... [and] brought it to the Parliament”), he was unable to regain his investment and reported that he suffered such inconvenience and damaged reputation that he emerged a poor man. While John Peirce held the title to the Plymouth lands “in trust,” he seems to have acted within his legal rights in his maneuver to exchange the indenture of 1621 for a new patent, but his purpose in doing so without informing his associates in London and New Plymouth is not clear. It evidently so angered them that when they found out they stubbornly refused to settle with him and pay the £500 fee he demanded. They probably were not unwilling to ruin him. Bradford, on the other hand, gave short shrift to the fact that the _Paragon_ sailed at Peirce’s charge and clearly accepted the opinion of the adventurers that God had directed her mishaps against him because of his action on the patent.[13] The joint stock company breaks up